The official 3-day Moto2 IRTA tests kick off tomorrow at the Valencia circuit, but several 125cc and Moto2 teams are currently carrying out some private testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.
El Tenerife 40 Pons with Aleix Espargaro and Axel Pons, Technomag CIP with Kenan Sofuoglu and Dominique Aegerter, Andrea Iannone and his Speed Master team and Marc Marquez with Monlau Competicion, as is Paris Hilton’s 125cc team, decided to take advantage of this test to shake off the rust after two long months.
Team Pons who runs Kalex chassis showed up with different aerodynamic solutions after spending a day of wind tunnel testing at the Volkswagen’s technical development center last December, while Suter delivered the new MMXI bike their teams.
Moto2 rookie and 125cc World Champion Marc Marquez continued to adapt to the new bike and put in 54 laps on the moderately warm Spanish track said, “On the first day back it always takes a bit of time to set a good pace again after such a long time off, and you don’t feel completely comfortable, but thanks to the team’s help we were able to improve step by step.
When I began to lap a bit faster we also started to make some small adjustments to the bike’s set-up, but they are still not very significant.
Now we have to take things calmly; we will have time to try and set good laps.
This first test was for me to recover the confidence on the bike, run the first kilometres of the year and get the first feelings from the machine.
As I increased the pace, we found some set-up problems that we have been solving, but we still have a good margin for improvement.
”No lap times were released.